The Demons of Modernity: Ingmar Bergman and European Cinema by John Orr (review)

Before his sudden death in 2010, John Orr had been working on this book about Ingmar Bergman (pp. 1, 111). The book is expansive and erudite in its treatment of European cinema and other topics, packed with references. It is aimed at the advanced film scholar. In her informative foreword, Maaret Koskinen discusses her collaboration with Orr and his ultimate objectives in writing the book. Noting Bergman’s mutable treatment of metaphysical questions, Koskinen introduces Orr’s reading of Bergman as emphasizing a theme of “demonic materialism—a kind of residual demon embedded in modernity” (p. 3). The theme introduces a broader social commentary on Bergman’s output. In her afterword, Anne Orr explains in greater detail John Orr’s comparative approach and his intent to contribute something original, which he accomplishes by way of “the prism of modernity” (p. 111). Peter Cowie and Maaret Koskinen read the manuscript; Orr’s daughter Katy edited it. Martine Beugnet performed the initial editing and compiled the fourth chapter, reworking Orr’s unfinished draft together with a previous article of Orr’s on Antonioni and Camus.

One of Orr’s aims is to counter any perception that Bergman is a peripheral European film director, and to establish him as a central and influential modernist auteur. Orr’s method is comparative, examining the work of European directors Carl Theodor Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michelangelo Antonioni, while referencing several more in the context of larger movements such as the French New Wave. Had he been able to complete the manuscript, chapters or topical sections dealing with Fritz Lang, Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, Andrzej Wajda, Terence Davies, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan would also have been included. Additionally, consideration would have been given to Bergman and the New German Cinema. Ultimately, what Orr shows is that Bergman influenced many of these European filmmakers.

In chapter 1, “Ingmar Bergman: The Demons of Modernity,” Orr contextualizes and summarizes his foundational observations, laying out his reading of Bergman as a basis for comparisons in the ensuing sections. He identifies Bergman’s witnessing the rise of German National Socialism as among the sources of the demons Bergman reckons with during his artistic career. He discusses the influence of Bergman’s family on the young auteur—particularly his father, Lutheran pastor Erik Bergman—as well as the intellectual influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and August Strindberg. Orr also intersperses unapologetic references to Bergman’s personality, his marital relationships and children, and the financial and psychological pressures that affected his work. His demons were religious, political, and artistic in nature, according to Orr.

Modernity contends with evil and questions the existence of God. Bergman’s films vary from the comic to the existential. He puts the Swedish social welfare society to the test. He challenges urban and modern ways of living while exploring the depths of human relationships. His films reflect time spent in the theater and moments occupied in the studio or in city-, land-, and seascapes. Bergman leaves many things ambiguous; characters and faces are abstracted from their surroundings. The films are often shot in black-and-white. Nonetheless, an artistic vision is apparent in every element.

In recounting the unsettling events of the modern age as they are reflected in the cinema, Orr sees Bergman as focusing on the academic, the doctor, or the psychiatrist. Orr’s method often reveals binaries—symmetries and oppositions: “In Bergman the caring professional operates on the shifting sands of institutionalized compassion. While Bergman often has an unerring gift for revealing compassion at the heart of cruelty, he equally has a gift for insinuating indifference or cruelty at the heart of compassion” (p. 20). Concerning the demonic as shown in Bergman’s work, Orr writes: “In the age of the welfare state, demons operate at the very heart of bourgeois civility and thrive in the very habitat of reason itself. . . . Bergman’s professionals on one view are caring, progressive and rational; on another they incubate the...